The Smell of Victory

There’s nothing like the smell of honeysuckle in the spring air on a morning walk! I have wonderful childhood memories of pinching the blooms from the vine and sipping their sweet nectar. I know Heaven will be beautiful beyond my imagination, but I sort of hope God has decided that it will smell like honeysuckle blooms! Revelation 21 gives us a glimpse of Heaven’s majesty by describing it as a city with walls of jasper, foundations of precious jewels, gates of pearls, streets of gold, and no tears or pain. That tells us that Heaven’s appearance will be magnificent and that we will always be joyful, but it says nothing about how Heaven might smell. I know that it really doesn’t matter one bit. What matters is that I go there one day and that I help as many other people as possible to go there as well. I’m just thinking that IF Heaven could be made any nicer, it should smell like honeysuckle blooms!

Another thing I remember from my childhood is watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports every Saturday. This was before the days of satellite television and Netflix and Hulu and Roku and ……… These were the days of getting three channels if you were lucky, of having a large antenna outside on a pole, and of one person having to go outside to physically turn the antenna pole, while another person stood at the door and yelled when he could see that the picture on the television was clearer. But I really wanted to mention what I remember about the Wide World of Sports. The show opened every week with Jim McKay making a statement about “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” and as he said “the agony of defeat,” you would see on the television screen a ski jump going horribly wrong. I never understood how the skier could have survived such a tremendous crash, so I always thought that was a victory in and of itself. Yes, it was a defeat for the athlete but a victory for the person to have survived and cheated death.

Today when I think about victory, I still think of victory over death but in a much different context. I think about the victory made possible by the blood of Christ. I’d like to share a passage from 1 Corinthians 15, which includes a couple of my favorite verses.

I Corinthians 15:50-57
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Praise be to God that Christians are promised victory over death through Jesus Christ! This promise should help us remain steadfast and motivated to continue in the Lord’s work (1 Corinthians 15:58). An eternity in Hell would be the ultimate agony of defeat, but an eternity in Heaven would be the most thrilling victory imaginable! And maybe, just maybe, that victory will smell like honeysuckle blooms in springtime.